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Isaiah 54:1 – Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the LORD.

In the verse above, Isaiah was reassuring the barren women in letting them now that they were still valued in the eyes of God, and could still be useful in the Kingdom of Heaven. As stated in Do Not Covet, the plight of a barren woman in that culture could often be very bleak, for a woman’s value to the world was in her ability to bear children for her family. A woman without children in the eyes of the world had no place, no purpose, and those in that predicament would often cry out to God, blaming Him for creating them to go through life in a scorned, empty, meaningless, wasted existence. Is it as bad as I am making it sound? No, actually it was worse.

But the prophet was letting women know that they should not allow their worth to be determined by the sinful world, but rather by their Creator, Elohim. And that is a message that women need to hear today. Because in this evil day, a woman’s value is not determined by her ability to bear children, but rather her ability to create lustful imaginations and desires in men and women. (Yes, I did say women, do not be naïve; the modeling industry spends a great deal of effort finding models and poses that will simultaneously appeal to men AND to homosexual women, and the longtime photographer and editor of the notorious Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition is a woman.) And that just shows the degenerated unnatural state of our world today. Though some gender feminists might disagree, there is nothing wrong with having children while in the confines of holy matrimony; it is indeed a blessing from the Lord. But there is PLENTY wrong with provoking lust via sins of lasciviousness, harlotry, etc. It just shows how we have gotten to where we call good (people restricting their sexuality to having children within the confines of marriage) evil and evil (pornography, homosexuality, promiscuity, adultery, fornication, and similar) good in these last days (Isaiah 5:20).

The point is that though value in childbearing is more virtuous than value in provoking sin, women AND men should reject ALL forms of how worth is measured by the world. Because whether you are male or female, black or white (or other race), rich or poor, learned or skilled, etc. there will always be a place where you will not measure up, and that will cause you to be ungrateful and envious rather than thankful, and prideful in that which you do have as a defense mechanism moreover. And even were that not the case, it would all be vanity anyway. Your earthly esteem means nothing in the eyes of God. All of these earthly notions are sinful or are based in sin, and therefore will be destroyed in the lake of fire. Women AND men should concentrate on setting their eyes upon that which will last, which is how God sees them spiritually and their spiritual usefulness to God. God sees us as made in His Image, male and female. And God uses us not to create earthly fruit of vain works to be appreciated by man, but rather supernatural fruit in spirit and in truth to please Him. When we give of ourselves, it is corrupted by sin, and God rejects it. But when we give of the spirit, God’s Spirit, things that God put in us using the Ruach Hakadosh (Holy Spirit) through submission and faith, God accepts it. What we “bring forth” or “give birth to” using the inspiration and guide of the Ruach Hakadosh can be called “our spiritual children.” And while natural children are most excellent and a blessing from God, not everyone can have them. Since God is no respecter of persons and places in the kingdom of Heaven will not be determined in a manner where God did not bestow on barren women (or sterile men) the ability to produce, then obviously what is more important is spiritual children from your ministry. Should men and women renounce having children in order to dedicate their lives to God? God forbid! For the most important ministry a man and woman can ever have is raising their children to know and honor Christ and to worship God only in spirit and in truth. But even that is a spiritual job rather than a carnal one, for it is very possible to have children that are great successes by worldly standards but do not honor God. So God, therefore, respects things that we all have the ability to participate in.

Now there are a great many ways to produce spiritual fruit for God, and which ways one takes advantage of and in what measure is a function of the portion of the Body of Christ that each individual believer is, and of the gifts of the Ruach Hakadosh that he has. So, we will not address that in detail here. Instead, we shall focus on the two things that EVERY CHRISTIAN is capable of doing and is called to do. Those are preaching the gospel and showing charity (love). If you dedicate yourself to doing those things, your spiritual children will be many indeed. Why? Because those two things are directly related to bringing souls into the children of Heaven. Each person who hears and receives the gospel as a result of your efforts … well it is as if you would have had those children yourself! Indeed, it is better, for as stated earlier a great many women and men who have children neglect to raise them up in the Lord, thereby creating spiritual orphans. And it is those people whom YOU will become the spiritual birth parents to!

The first is preaching the gospel. No one can accept the gospel unless they hear it, and no one can hear the gospel unless it is preached, and the gospel cannot be preached unless there is a preacher. If people are going to be saved, someone has to tell them about Yeshua HaMashiach’s deity, birth, death, and resurrection, and that someone has to be you. No, I did not say “Why not you”, I said “that person HAS to be you.” While there are “surrogate mothers” for natural childbirth, in spiritual childbirth that is not the case: YOU HAVE TO PREACH. I heard a preacher assert that when we get to Heaven, people are going to go ask Yeshua HaMashiach where their family members and friends were, and upon being told “they are not here”, asking Him “Did not you create a salvation plan for them?” and His replying “Yes, and you were it, and you neglected to do it.” While witnessing to your family members, co – workers, neighbors, and friends is required, I reject the notion that the gospel should be “personalized” in such a fashion. We are, quite simply explicitly called to preach to total strangers. The former notion is based on the idea that a person is more willing to receive the gospel if it comes from someone that they know. Or that by virtue of knowing a person, one can “tailor – make” a gospel presentation that exploits that person’s needs and weaknesses. That is wrong, for it puts the pressure on the PREACHER to save people. The PREACHER does not save people, God does. Yeshua HaMashiach said that HE is the shepherd and HIS SHEEP will know HIS VOICE and respond to the sound of it. They are not your sheep, they are HIS sheep, it is not your voice it is HIS voice. So yes, perhaps preaching the gospel over and over again to a family member or co – worker over the course of many years may wear down the demonic oppression in his mind. Maybe you will be at the right place at the right time to preach the gospel when he is ready to accept it. Or maybe you will be able to, after some effort, come up with some apologetics that will convince him. That is what was the legendary case between J. R. R. Tollkein and C. S. Lewis. But even that is not your doing, for it is the Ruach Hakadosh that gave you the boldness and determination to put in the persistent effort. It was the Ruach Hakadosh that put you near your friend to preach to him when he was at his lowest point. It was the Ruach Hakadosh that gave you the wisdom to be able to answer all of your co – worker’s demonically – induced lying doubts. So just as the Ruach Hakadosh is able to do the work of bringing the sheep to the shepherd when the sheep is someone that you have known for fifty years, the Ruach Hakadosh is capable of bringing a sheep that you have known for all of thirty seconds to the shepherd.

And what of the sheep that do not respond? Do not worry. Do not grieve that your awkward or harsh or unconvincing presentation cost someone their eternal soul. Why? Again, consider the “thirty second conversions” that you hear the evangelists gushing about. How many of those “quick converts” do you believe ACTUALLY made the biggest decisions of their lives on a thirty second pitch if they have not been considering it prior? No, what happened in many of these instances is that SOMEONE ELSE PREACHED THE GOSPEL TO THEM BEFORE YOU GOT TO THEM, AND THEY HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT IT. Maybe for a few minutes, maybe for a few months, maybe for a hundred years! In a great many instances, all the “quick converter” does is “close the deal.” Take these “altar calls” at church. A great many of these people were not convinced to come to Jesus by the sermon. How can I say that? Because why did they come to church in the first place? Most of these people heard about Jesus somewhere else, and went to the church to be saved! Realize that there is NO FAILURE in Christ. A person who was not Christ’s sheep will not respond no matter how persistent the effort, no matter how excellent the pitch. And a person who IS Christ’s sheep? Even if they do not respond to you now, they will respond to someone else down the line. Provided, of course, that you preach to them. But the problem today is that there are so few “follow – up conversions” because there are so few initial attempts! That is what needs to be corrected. If you are shy about preaching the gospel, the best way is to just go up and do it to get your start. Walk out on the street or go to the mall and go up to the first person you see, and ask them if they want to go to Heaven when they die. If that person is a sheep, even if he laughs in your face, you will have contributed to his taking someone else more seriously down the line. If he is a goat, then well consider him practice for the sheep. Remember: Yeshua HaMashiach’s own countrymen put Him on the tree. Are you that much better than Him? (And go back to the follow – up conversion theme, a great many people who rejected Yeshua HaMashiach were later converted by the preaching of Peter and the others who accepted Him!) Where does love come in? Well, first off, you will never be a truly effective evangelist if you do not LOVE who you are evangelizing! You have to see them not so much as people of flesh, because you will be fooled by the condition of the outside. On the outside you may see a successful male who has a great job and a lot of money, is exceptionally educated, has a loving happy family where everyone conducts themselves morally, and has a fulfilling life. Try as you might, you cannot bring yourself to pity such a person. Indeed, your flesh might even envy him! On the opposite end of the spectrum, see someone who is rotting in jail for committing a series of truly heinous crimes against defenseless innocent victims. Again, you will not pity such a person in your flesh, but want to hate him! But look through the flesh to their spirits and you will see someone trapped in the pain and torment of sin and in deep dread of judgment! Only if you are able to love the SPIRIT of a person will you be able to effectively evangelize that person no matter who he is without your flesh – or his flesh – getting in the way.

There is another dimension too, and that is simply that love makes for a great witness, especially among the people that experience you often: your church members, neighbors, friends, and family members. It is one thing to TELL them why you are saved, it is another thing to SHOW them. Get this: plenty of people would receive the gospel if they had never in their lives gone to church. Why? Because when these people went to church, they met some of the coldest and most hateful people on the planet! Synagogues of Satan, of course! Or sure, they were very nice and accommodating inside the church, but hypocrites and double – minded people out of it. Lukewarm Laodiceans! But if you can show someone true love over a consistent period of time, that will cover up the wounds that such a person has experienced in his life. That will make him forget all of the intellectual problems that he has with the Bible. It will overcome all of his biases and prejudices. That person will see in you what he has been missing in his life and want some of it! Sure, love is shown when you go to the derelicts in the streets, visit the widows and orphans in their homes, the sick and dying in their hospices, and the prisoners in jail, and these things we must do. But that does not replace showing love to the people that you see every day in your life. If you cannot see the wounded spirit in your next door neighbor that needs a salve, then the sympathy that you claim to feel for someone dying of cancer in a hospital ward is false! And if you do cannot forgive the sins of the person that you worship with each Sunday, how can you tell the drunk lying in the gutter that you want God to forgive HIS sins? Showing love not only gets people into the church, it keeps people from backsliding out of it. If you can keep yourself from taking the easy way out by either condemning someone when they sin or supporting them in their sins, and instead choose the hard path – the path of love – by showing them compassion and mercy but insisting that they need to repent not to please you or the person that they have hurt, but rather to please GOD, then the sheep will listen. As for the goats, well if you can show love to a goat then your ability to show love will be perfected when it is time to counsel a sheep’s broken heart. Christians are not charged to withdraw ourselves from the world and its problems, we are charged to go out into the world and get the people OUT of the world and its sins. But we cannot do that if we do not have love. We have to preach the gospel, and we have to show love both so that the preaching of the gospel is effective AND that the hope and power of the gospel stays with our fellowservants during the storms that they will inevitably face. That includes showing love to the all the prodigal sons upon their return.

But you say that you do not know how to show love? Then be of good cheer, for you are better than the religious hypocrites who claim to know love but do not. Cast off the religious preconceptions, as well as the corrupt worldly notions of love. All you have to do to be one who shows perfect love – which casts out all fear – is keep John 14:15, which is is keeping the Commandments of God. How is this? Well, realize that you are a sinner, born a rebel to God. So naturally there is no love or goodness in you. The religious hypocrites have no concept of this, and regard their love as actions motivated by their own hearts. Little do they know that their hearts are diseased and corrupted, cold and dead by sin to love or righteousness! So, the only way you can even have love to show it is through the Holy Spirit coming out of you. If you submit yourself to the Holy Spirit by obeying the Word of God, then that allows the Holy Spirit to use you as a vessel to bring forth love out of the spiritual realm into the natural realm. But if you disobey the commandments of God, you are actually restraining the working of the Holy Spirit with your own will. The Holy Spirit is trying to pour love out through you, but you are capping the lid on it! Or it can be said that you are a marred, corrupt vessel unfit for the Holy Spirit’s use. Also, if you love yourself first, you will do your own will and lie by calling it acceptable or even the will of God, as do the religious hypocrites. But if you love God first, you will give up your own will and desires and be contented to do the will of God. So make no mistake Christian, obedience is the key to showing love, and one of the main areas of obedience that needs be done IS TO PREACH THE GOSPEL!

So be encouraged, fellowservants in Christ. Preach the gospel and show love, and you will have many spiritual children counted as yours on judgment day. I love you all and may God save, bless, and keep you.

Prayer: Father YHVH in the Name of Yeshua HaMashiach, may Your children forget about worldly value systems and vain works of the flesh and instead seek to produce spiritual fruit before you by faith with love and the gospel. Amen.Deliverance: The demons that work in this area are low self esteem and worldliness. Please read the Basic Spiritual Warfare guide to learn more about how to go against these demons to help set captives free and win battles in the name of your God through the power, authority, and victory given to you by his Son Jesus Christ and by his blood shed for you!